Geneva-Switzerland. It is the home to one of the world's largest physics laboratories, which employs 2,500 scientists, officials and technicians and is used remotely by 12,000 science workers. With all the most expensive equipment in the world, this laboratory is so large that it shares the land of Switzerland, France and Spain together. It is called the European Center for Nuclear Research or CERN for short. CERN's main research is directed to the fundamental particles of matter and the interaction of energy with those although the invention of the world wide web also happened there. In front of CERN's head office in Geneva, there is a huge statue of a dancing Shiva, the Hindu God called Nataraja. Why is there a statue of Shiva in front of the main building of one of the most modern science laboratories in the world which is owned by 23 modern secular western countries? The statue was erected not too long ago, even as recent as 2004.
The dancing idol of Shiva called Nataraja has four hands in this manifestation of the Hindu God. He holds a musical drum in one hand and fire in his other. Shiva is the symbol of power. When he dances while playing the drum called dumru, the universe is created from his power, he is then ‘Mangala’ -the good one. And when he dances with fire, the universe becomes destroyed, he is then ‘Rudra’ – the violent one. The backdrop of the dancing Shiva is a wheel, the symbol of the eternal cycle. All the particle accelerators that CERN has, like the monstrous 18 km long Large Hadron Collider (LHD), do the same like Nataraja, but on a smaller scale. Creating and destroying particles with energy, trying to understand the interaction of matter and energy to learn about the secret of creation and destruction of the Universe – the Shiva’s duty. A statement by world-renowned physicist Fritzoff Capra inscribed on the altar of Nataraja in CERN: “Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.”
Those who created the Hindu mythology have always made sure that the core pattern of how Nature works is a cycle. Everything in the world revolves like a wheel and the situation comes back again with a new morph. The material world that is visible, touchable, feelable - is only a temporary form of cyclic dance of energy. The patterns of nature's activities were easily grasped by the early sages, gurus and they tried to formulate the path of humanity in synchronization with Nature's goal. That is why those who have become keen learners and scholars in cosmology, quantum physics, particle physics have read Indian mythology. Many have learned Sanskrit to understand it better. The wonder was, if those ancient scholars understood so much about the pattern of the functions of the Universe so well from the observation of daily life events, there must be something more hidden in their thoughts and directions.
In physics, elementary particles are the smallest unit of matter, just as viruses are the smallest unit of living things. Just as elementary particles stand between energy and matter, so viruses stand between living beings and the material world. Just as the material world is submerged in the sea of unstoppable and ubiquitous elementary particles, so is the animal world submerged in a sea of unstoppable and ubiquitous sea of viruses. If those ancient scholars understood the dance of energy and matter so much, what did they think about the dance of life and matter?
Those of us born in modern times, educated in science and technology, seem reluctant to think outside the box. We are also reluctant to think a bit about what Nature’s long term plans are with energy, matter, and the living world. No university has a course on what Nature’s grand plans are, it is not discussed. Nature doesn't mean a BBC or National Geographic's glittering documentary on a 65-inch flat-screen TV, nor is it what David Attenborough lectures there. Nature means the grand rules of the Universe about the interaction of life and matter, the interaction of energy and matter – in short, the dances of Nataraja.
We modern people who learn a bit of science, do a little math and show some technological excellence, we think that we are the authority of knowledge and in exchange we demand a long, hassle-free healthy life with a sustainable environment. We become surprised when some unwanted disease or virus infects us, hindering our hope. We try to find someone to blame (now China) who we think is responsible for this. We don’t even think for a second about what Nature wants. Don't we have to keep ourselves in synchronization with the plans and goals of Nature? Keep ourselves in rhythm with the patterns that Nature and its will? Or should we try to ignore and try to make a comfortable deviation?
According to current scientific ideas, our present universe was created from a 'Big Bang' about 14 billion years ago. The first three minutes of it there were no rules, which is called singularity in physics. Then the laws of physics, that is, the laws of Nature were established. The planet Earth, our home, was formed about four and a half billion years ago. Evidence of the existence of life has been found there for over a billion years later. The process of photosynthesis began about three and a half billion years ago, and one billion years later, the increase in oxygen in the atmosphere started to begin, which was not there before. Two and a half billion years ago the oxygen in the atmosphere came in current proportions. About a billion years ago bacteria and other unicellular organisms were born. The first sexual reproduction and the multicellular organisms that lived in the oceans began about 600 million years ago. Fish were born about 400 million years ago and dinosaurs about 300 million years ago. Birds flew in the sky about 200 million years ago, followed by mammals in the land. Bees were born about 100 million years later than that and that is when the first flowers bloom. The ancestors of the ape species were there about 10 million years ago.
About 4 million years ago, their successors began to walk on two legs for the first time. The use of stone tools began three and a half million years ago and the use of fire began one and a half million years ago. About eight hundred thousand years ago, food was first cooked to eat. Modern humans, or Homo sapiens, began living in Africa about three hundred thousand years ago, and clothing began to cover the private parts of the body about two hundred thousand years ago. The emergence of society and culture began following that period. Then came the emergence of customs and religion and spirituality. The expansion of the agricultural society began about ten thousand years ago. That follows the subsequent emergence of ideological and psycho-social effects that drive people based on the processing of ideas, plans, ideals, ethics, politics etc. The rapid spread of transferable knowledge and the rise of science-technology based society emerged in the following last two thousand years. The emergence of digital processing began over the last 50 years which has led to the beginning of information processing in machines.
If we look at this whole evolutionary process from the beginning of creation to the digital age as a trend of Nature, we see the origin of matter from energy soup 14 billion years ago, the earth 4 billion years ago, the life 800 million years ago, the mind (which can process information, memorize, decide and act) 6 million years ago. A faith-spiritual culture from a million years ago that now extends to digital processing of information till today. This means that the animal-nature-world is moving from simple energy-matter interaction to processing virtual information . That virtual information processing can be either in the brains of biological units or animals or in the digital processors. That is to say, the nature of the biological world is advancing on the path of processing the activities of the material world into information and processing them in thoughts (whether in the brain or digital processor). The goal is to move from material events to thoughtful simulations.
If we look at the matter from a slightly different angle. If any digital processor is placed under a very powerful microscope, it can be seen that it is just an interaction of some elementary particles, but their arrangement is in a very complex energy-particle matrix. In the same way, the human brain or any biological process is just the electrochemical action of cells on a micro scale. Any chemical action that can be seen on a micro scale shows that they are just the acts of the energy of the electrons in the outer shells of the atom. Looking at it on a much smaller scale, they are just a reaction of the energy fields with the elementary particles. This means that biology on a micro scale is actually chemistry, chemistry is actually physics and physics is actually an interaction of elementary particles and energy fields. So what is it that I am writing in front of the computer or the things that are coming out of my head? They are just the interaction of those elementary particles and energy fields, but arranged in a certain matrix that carry 'meaning'. That 'meaning' is very important for survival. Either it contains the information about how the matrix will be arranged and about the subject that the matrix is working on (the subject of my writing).
As the ancient scholars imagined the dancing idol of Shiva playing the drums to create the universe or to destroy it with fire. They also suggested about the dance of living beings and inanimate objects that the dream, the thought or the conscious ideas of truth (eternal laws of Universe) is real, the thinker’s body, objects around it and the material ‘reality’ is false, Maya. What happens in the consciousness remains, it is the duty of the organism to carry the information further, regardless of its existence, which is not too much focusing on bodily well-being.
According to the Brahmandaya Purana “In the big dark ocean of emptiness, lord Vishnu is resting on the king of Naga, the snake named Ananta Shesha. A lotus grows from his naval, Lord Brahma sits on the lotus, the symbol of divine energy and divine grace, who is the creator. Brahma's wife is Saraswati. Devi Saraswati was the form of Mother Goddess to assist him in the process of creation. Every time lord Vishnu opens his eyes, the Universe destroys, when he sleeps, all created again, Vishnu is the sleeping god, whose dream is the material universe, the Maya.”
Vishnu is the sleeping god, whose dream is the universe, so it is Maya, an illusion. The real is consciousness, the understanding of the laws of the Universe. That is the goal.
The Hindu Vedas, Puranas or modern physics both say the same thing, that matter or the material world is in fact an illusion. Everything created by matter is illusion, Maya. Our healthy body, that is not the goal of nature, the goal of nature to create more complex information metrics that survives. From the simplicity of an electron to a 27-core Zion W processor, or from the simplicity of a single-celled organism to a more complex and intricate layout like the human brain, nature wants to go further. And in order to achieve that, nature wants change, transformation, mutation. Viruses, cancers, catastrophes are the weapons of Nature for those changes. And we came so far following the same way.
In this journey, if man does not comply with Nature, if he wants to go ahead with the development of the material world created for his own comfort and keeping his body in the same stagnant fix, it will be in conflict with nature. And we all know who will win in this conflict.
Throughout the ages, thinkers of almost all religions or Indian wisdom have said so, leave the material affection, leave the bodily affection, come to the world of thought more. Philosophers speak of plain living high thinking. They said that being a mature person means gradually coming to the world of thoughts by winning the sensual domination because the body dies, thought doesn’t. Our goal should be to pass the laws of Nature to the next generation so that the next generation can understand Nature better and can prepare themselves for defining that path for their survival.
Rig Veda suggests from 3500 years ago "Who knows for certain? Who shall here declare it? Where was it born? Whence came creation? The Gods are later than this world's formation, who then can know the origins of the world? None knows whence creation arose or whether he has or has not made it - he who surveys it from the lofty skies. Only he knows, or perhaps he knows not." Those ancient scholars tried to find the laws of the Universe with an open mind and tried to find out the direction for us. In this way they were so successful that they discovered so many patterns of Nature that modern scientists were so amazed, especially the quantum physicists and particle physicists that they have come again and again to our area, to this land, many have learned Sanskrit, the predecessor of our mother language. From Schrodinger to Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, Oppenheimer, Tesla - there are many others who have not disclosed it too.
In the last 3500 years we did not proceed further in that courageous learning paths of Vedas or Upanishads so much. Religion means we understand the spread of ego, factionalism and dogmatism. We killed philosophy everywhere with so much fun and enthusiasm. In psychology, psychoanalysis we made obsolete, which actually created the knowledge. Science has become mainly the slave to the sale of products to make life comfortable. Which is in fact limited to the wellbeing of the material world for sensual and body centric service. That is to say, we are now engaged in the path which has been advised to be avoided in the Vedas and Upanishads with great importance.
In the last 20 years, three deadly coronaviruses had zoonotic transfer from bats to humans. However, the animal-to-human spillover events are rarely observed or clinically examined, it is happening all the time and it can be very difficult to prevent. The spillovers are rarely deadly historically when all the intermediate animals fight the virus with its own immune response. What if we create a huge spectrum of intermediate hosts with very poor immune systems which are incapable of fighting novel viruses? For the endless sensual consumption and for the sake of so-called physical safety of modern humans, we have been synthetically creating alternate nature for human consumption and living. The ecosystem, the biome and the virome of the agricultural production system and animal farms we are making are going further and further away from the billions of years old natural ecosystem, biome and virome. So already there are two ecosystems, one is wild and natural and another is human made, alternate, based on drugs and chemicals. When these two worlds meet, there will be disaster because the alternate one will not have any natural resistance against the natural novo-pathogens.
In addition, we are making our immune system weak by keeping it isolated from the pathogens from other wild animals which learn continuously and prepare from the exposure from non-deadly pathogens from wild sources. By relying too much on laboratory-made drugs and vaccines we are making our immune system weaker and inept to fight natural novo-pathogens which was naturally adaptive when we were connected to other animals for millions of years.
Creating an alternate nature for human consumption and living, will Nature accept this audacity? Never.